Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
Europe’s big banks meet. The Bank of England is expected to keep rates steady after a November raise, but it could give a hint about the pace of hikes next year. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank will release its 2020 inflation projection, and president Mario Draghi could indicate how and when the central bank’s stimulus program will end.
Fox and Disney close a deal. Comcast dropped its offer to purchase major parts of 21st Century Fox earlier this week, leaving Disney as the sole bidder. The deal’s details aren’t clear, though analysts estimate that Fox’s assets top $60 billion.
Net neutrality could be repealed in the US. Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai says the existing regulations, which ensure that providers treat internet content equally, discourage investment. If the FCC votes to repeal, it would allow providers to slow or block specific content.
While you were sleeping
A Kentucky lawmaker was found dead after an abuse allegation. Two days after Republican state representative Dan Johnson was accused of sexually assaulting a teenager, his body was found with a gunshot to the head. He is believed to have killed himself. On Wednesday, Johnson had denied the allegation in a Facebook post.
Around 6,700 Rohingya people were killed in a month in Myanmar. A Médecins Sans Frontières report said they were mostly shot, burned, or beaten to death by the Myanmar military between August and September. Myanmar’s official death toll is just 400. More than 640,000 of the Muslim minority people have fled the Rakhine province since August.
Vladimir Putin’s annual press conference kicked off. The televised event is the last major public appearance by the Russian president before the March 2018 presidential election, where he’ll be standing as an independent candidate. The conference tends to go on for hours—last year, Putin answered 50 questions.
Euro zone companies ended 2017 on a major high. IHS Markit’s composite flash PMI hit 59.0 in December as an uptick in demand plus rising prices buoyed businesses across the economic area to an almost seven-year high. Factories in particular enjoyed the best month of activity in the survey’s 20-year history.
A humiliated Theresa May limped over to Brussels. Hours after the UK prime minister was defeated in a key Brexit vote by members of her own party, the prime minister headed to a summit on Thursday to urge EU leaders to move on to talks on Britain’s trade deal with the bloc.
Quartz obsession interlude
Lynsey Chutel on the collapse of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s textile industry. “The Chinese entry was subtle. At first they only supplied the bales of plain cotton fabric. Then printed fabric began to arrive, the quality seeming to improve with every run until they were able to mimic the Congolese designs. Soon, it required a meticulous eye to notice the difference.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
AI is destroying our free will. Replacing human curation with data-backed judgment narrows our perspective in a way that chokes our social and economic choices.
Saying “you are capable” is the best way to compliment girls and young women. They’re at risk of internalizing social biases about their own potential.
Republicans no longer fear Stephen Bannon. Trump’s onetime Rasputin could not prevent Alabama from electing a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in 25 years.
Surprising discoveries
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is being sent to space. Astronauts in the International Space Station are getting their own digital copy of the movie.
Human-sized penguins once waddled the Earth. Scientists estimate the bird weighed about 220 lbs (100 kg) and stood just shy of 6 ft (1.8 m).
Amazon in Germany sells Nazi-style Legos. One father’s Change.org petition to stop their sale has garnered nearly 1,500 signatures.
A volcanic region of Ethiopia gives us clues about life on Mars. The Danakil Depression is an inhospitable region where toxic gases saturate the air.
Ticks feasted on dinosaur blood. The parasitic organisms have been around for at least 99 million years.
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